


Between the Shadow and the Soul

by briolette



Category: Historical RPF, The Tudors (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Historical, Alternate Universe - Tudor Era, F/M, Historical, Tudor Era
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-01-06
Updated: 2018-04-21
Packaged: 2019-03-01 01:03:29
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 9
Words: 22,462
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13283637
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/briolette/pseuds/briolette
Summary: By a stroke of luck or by a gift from God, Anne Boleyn escapes the executioner's block with her head intact, and her crown―for now, at least. Death, as Anne comes to realize, might almost have been easier.





	1. Chapter 1

Anne Boleyn faced the long walk from her apartment in the Tower to the scaffold with dread. On the verge of crossing the threshold and moving into the corridor, her feet halted, as if they possessed minds of their own.

She did not know why her body chose to betray her in this way, and quite frankly, she resented it. She had had enough betrayals, and had thought herself done with them. One (admittedly long) walk, and it would be over. But it seemed that the body, when faced with certain death, chose the most inconvenient moment in which to manifest a desire to live.

Anne was all too aware of her pulse, fluttering like a butterfly's wings, and the sound of her own breathing, loud in her ears. Her fingers trembled; she balled her hands into fists. Her entire being was a towering springtime thundercloud, lit from within, a raging storm of blood flow and breath.

She was still so young! The unfairness of it struck at her like lightning. To be cut down in her youth... ignominiously interred, no doubt, shoved into some crude box like an embarrassment, while her husband made his preparations to marry that whey-faced Seymour girl…

And Elizabeth…

She felt her knees buckle beneath her.

"Your Majesty," murmured one of her attendants, moving quickly to her side to steady her.

But the woman's touch was unfamiliar, and Anne shrank from it. She leaned heavily against the doorway, gulping in air until she felt herself stiffening with resolve. She did not want it said of her that she'd gone to her death like some common wench. She was Anne, Queen of England, and she could not bear to think of her daughter hearing stories of how her mother had been all but dragged to the scaffold.

"Thank you," she said quietly to the attendant who'd tried to support her. The woman curtsied and resumed her place.

And they walked.

For a small portion of that walk, she considered her legs, moving beneath the rather plain gown she had donned for the occasion. Anne had been extraordinarily graceful, even as a child, and well she knew hat to others it appeared as if she glided. She reveled in the feeling of feet planted firmly on the ground; she enjoyed the sensation of her gown rushing against her legs (for while it was an unadorned garment, it was comprised of the most sumptuous fabrics―pity, considering its impending consignment to whatever pitiful box awaited her earthly remains).

Before, so long ago she could hardly imagine the vast gulf of time that had elapsed, Anne Boleyn and her ambitious family had made the most careful plans, had weighed each fork in the road, so that the most innocuous choice seemed weighted with auspicious significance. Then, each moment had been as if charged by lightning. Now, she was a dead woman. All that was needed was to finalize it.

One step at a time, she coached herself. One foot in front of the mother. If she looked back, to Elizabeth, to her brother George, and especially to Henry, damn him, then she was lost.

Anne heard, distantly, the shuffle of the women behind her, women who had been appointed to wait on her, essentially strangers. And, also, Sir William Kingston, Constable of the Tower, her jailer and companion on this, her final walk. But so focused was she that they arrived at the exit much sooner than she had anticipated.

The blue sky stretched overhead, littered with dark clouds, behind which the sun had gone to hide. A stiff, cool breeze had begun to rustle her garments, and those of her companions. Briefly Anne recalled the wild prophesying she'd committed during her arrest, in retrospect perhaps not the cleverest thing to convince her accusers she was not a witch; but she had said there would be no rain until she was freed. Amusing, in retrospect, to see the clouds building on the day of her execution. Anne had had plenty of time to contemplate, and now she knew that death was a type of freedom, too.

As they drew closer to the scaffold on the Tower Green, her thoughts began to lose their slow, dreamy quality, and everything became sharper, coming into stark relief. Thunder overhead echoed in the muttering of the crowd, which seethed restlessly. The court officials gathered on the scaffold seemed to shift worried gaze between the sky, which grew ever darker as clouds crowded out the blue, and the crowd.

When they saw her, heads turned and the sound of voices seemed to pick up. She flinched, almost imperceptibly, in anticipation of the lewd catcalls she'd received throughout her tenure, and with varying degrees of regularly, as first the King's sweetheart and then his wife. But they did not come.

The crowd, she saw, was made up of perhaps more women than men, and, surprisingly, she glimpsed more of the well-to-do variety in the crowd.

Her heart, that tenacious old thing, skipped a beat in her chest.

"What can it mean?" she murmured.

Almost as if in answer, another of her waiting women, Mary Kingston, who so happened to be the wife of the Constable of the Tower, urged, "Your Majesty, look there!"

Inclined toward kindness regarding Lady Kingston, whom Anne felt sympathized with her and even seemed convinced of her innocence, Anne deigned to direct her attention in the direction Lady Kingston indicated.

A sort of disturbance in the crowd seemed to be undulating outward from the middle, growing in intensity as if energized by she knew not what. One of the other women, a stranger to Anne, responsible mostly for cleaning the apartment to which Anne had been consigned, seemed to forget herself as she muttered, "Good Lord, what's that they're saying?" The woman, not minding at all that she'd spoken out of turn in the presence of the Queen, seemed to strain to hear. "Something like, 'God save… God save the Queen.'"

All the air left Anne's lungs in a rush.

She feared―she prayed―she wished―and with a fervency that made her blind to the irony, as hadn't she just looked to death as an escape from the cruel perfidy of life? But it was only natural. Hearts wanted to beat. Eyes wanted to see. And, if her own did not deceive her, she saw a rotten bit of foodstuff go sailing through the air, landing on the scaffold with a sound that turned her stomach and that seemed to carry in the foreboding quiet.

Into the oppressive silence that followed came the rumble of thunder and, hard on its heels, a flash of lightning. And then a cry: "Now!"

Later, Anne would wonder, puzzle, and agonize over details of that one moment that changed everything, and the strange, frenzied several moments that followed it; but, then, her impressions came in disconnected, disjointed heartbeats of time. Noise―angry yelling, pounding footsteps, cries of alarm and pain. Sight―a flurry of movement as the Tower Green dissolved into chaos. The furious, upraised faces of the members of the mob storming the scaffold; blanched terror on the faces of the court officials, who'd come to oversee the death of Anne but now, it seemed, faced their own.

The storm broke overhead, spurring the mob on as the men on the scaffold broke and ran, fleeing toward safety. Anne could feel herself being marched, rushed, hurried from the lawn, whether toward safety or a knife waiting to slit her throat she did not know or even care. Her feet moved automatically, as they had before, but now she lifted smiling eyes and trembling lips to the sky and let the rain wash her clean.

***

"There was a riot," said Sir William Kingston, much later.

Dusk had fallen, though the cloud cover made the hour seem much later. His wife, Lady Mary, was stationed near the door, taking it upon herself to pour wine from her finest vintage for the Queen.

For this interview, Anne sat in a comfortable chair in the apartment of the Constable, a chair Anne figured was the one Sir William himself usually claimed. Surreal as the day had been, the most ludicrous thing of all was that Sir William, her jailer, had offered her his favored chair. Even accounting for his obvious chivalry, well… Anne had expected to be short a head by now. Courtesy was almost too much.

She received the wine from Lady Mary with a nod and faint murmur of gratitude, and then refocused on Sir William.

"A riot?" she repeated, in similar tones to what one would use when making polite comments about the weather.

"Yes, Your Majesty," said Sir William. After a moment, he rushed to clarify, "Besides the one we witnessed today, I mean." When the Queen tilted her head in polite inquiry, he cleared his throat and continued. "There was a riot, a few days ago… on the 17th of May, to be precise."

That caught Anne's attention. Sir William coughed and drank deeply from his own wine, the better to redirect his gaze from Anne's, which had focused on him with searing intensity. The 17th of May was to have been the execution date of the men with whom she'd been accused.

He answered her unasked question. "The group of men, your brother included, were returned to the Tower. They are still alive."

Anne released the breath she had been holding. "Thank God," she murmured, squeezing her eyes shut for a moment.

"It was rather unexpected, the public outrage over Your Majesty's trial and conviction," said Sir William, dryly. Anne had been aware of the murmurings, the discontent, spread by those of England who'd hearkened to the Reformers' religion and saw Anne as a champion―though she could not forget her one-time ally in that matter was also the architect of her downfall.

She put Thomas Cromwell out of her mind, though her face might have betrayed her feelings, for Sir William said plainly, "I never believed the accusations to have any validity." She nodded in acknowledgment, and he continued. "But while the good people of England were content to grumble about the dissolution of the King's marriage to the Dowager Princess of Wales, it seems they would withhold toleration when His Majesty attempted it a second time, with rumors of a marriage to Sir John Seymour's daughter afterward flying all about. Your Majesty will be pleased to know that the King of France wrote in support of you."

Sir William seemed to tack that last response on as a distraction from the mention of the Seymour wench. Anne realized that if she meant to keep her life over the next several days, she had better do a better job of masking her emotions behind a semblance of queenly dignity. She schooled her features accordingly.

"And the King's response to these extraordinary events?" she asked, setting aside her goblet of wine and folding her hands in her lap.

The Queen meant to ask if the King meant to kill her anyway, Sir William realized.

"An emergency meeting of the Privy Council was convened, not long after the―" he seemed embarrassed as to what he ought to call the events of the morning.

"―riot at my execution," she finished for him.

"Ah―yes, that is… Thank you, Madam," he said, ducking his chin.

Anne had some small difficulty keeping the smile off her face. Imagine, the Constable of the Tower, so flustered in the presence of one of his prisoners.

"They'll cancel it," spoke up Lady Mary, "if they have any sense of fairness and justice." She stepped closer, clearly more comfortable in Anne's presence than her husband was. While Sir William had attended Anne's coronation as part of the procession, and more recently welcomed her into his care as a prisoner, Lady Mary had waited on her over the course of her imprisonment, intermittently, and had doubtless reported on her doings and sayings. Anne knew, as surely that she knew the Seymours were her sworn enemies, that Lady Mary was a friend. "Your Majesty," said the lady, "there's not a wife in London, or the whole of the kingdom, who doesn't sympathize with you. If the Queen isn't safe from being set aside by her husband for any woman who crosses his path and looks at him twice, no wife can feel safe―or should!"

Sir William coughed quietly. "Quite so. Thank you, my dear. The Queen will lodge with us tonight, and seek repose in our own bedchamber. Madam, we'll see you well-treated until the Privy Council decides what will happen next, and I pray then you'll return to Whitehall, where you belong."

"You have my thanks, and my friendship," Anne assured him.

At Lady Mary's behest, Anne followed her deeper into the Constable's apartment, where a steaming bath and hot meal awaited her.

Sleep came difficult, that night; while Lady Mary shared the bedchamber with her, lest Her Majesty should awaken and require anything, Anne could not help but fear that she wouldn't awaken if she fell asleep.

Anne had not been given any finery with which to adorn herself during her stay in the Tower. Why would she have any need of jewels or gowns? She was sentenced to die, and worldly things seemed gaudy, in truth. So, when Lady Mary Kingston came with a couple of waiting women, gowns, and jewels galore, and informed the Queen that she'd been pronounced not guilty, and that the King and a large retinue were en route to escort her back to Whitehall with all the pomp and circumstance a beleaguered queen could wish for, Anne felt the gravity of the past few days so deeply that her knees gave out and she sat down quickly and hard in the nearest seat.

"The King," she murmured to herself. She spared a pity-laden thought for the young girl she had been, who'd called him "my love" and "darling Henry" and all manner of ridiculous pet names. For so long, now, her husband had lived as "the King" in her imagination, as distant and cold as stars in a wintry sky.

Anne let the waiting women, under Lady Mary's supervision, bathe her and perfume her skin with rosewater, and drape about her all manner of elegant underpinnings and garments. They brushed her hair before the fire until it dried and shone as dark as a raven's wing, and dressed it in some becoming style or another. When she was at last greeted with the sight of her reflection, she beheld a queenly visage, indeed, draped in purple and weighed down with the jewels of the Queens of England. She had lost some weight, and faint circles of fatigue ringed her eyes, and she was as pale as anyone would be, she supposed, if they had stared down the nightmare of their own death and lived to tell the tale.

She turned to face the women, and saw Lady Mary give a visible start. The waiting women seemed struck dumb. They seemed to have glimpsed the phantasm of the dead woman in the visage of the living one. Lady Mary, recovering quickly, dismissed the servants.

When they were gone, Anne turned to Lady Mary. "What of my brother, and the others?" she asked quickly, as if the King could walk in at any minute and hear her query and find some ill will in it.

"Freed and exonerated, and fled," the lady replied. "Lord Rochford has gone to Hever; the others have scattered according to whim and means. One presumes they would all prefer some time to recover from their ordeals. Master Smeaton has gone with your brother, Madam, to… ah, recover and convalesce."

Mark Smeaton, thought Anne sadly, would likely have been tortured if he had not given a satisfactory confession in a timely manner. As the only one among the accused not to bear the status of gentleman, he would have been subject to the cruelest treatments and the meanest accommodations offered by the Tower and Cromwell's cronies.

"May God lend them strength," said Anne.

"And you, Your Majesty," said Lady Mary. "May God lend you strength, now, for what you must bear."

Anne lowered her chin in acknowledgment. "Death," said she, with no small amount of dark humor, "might almost be easier."


	2. Chapter 2

The crowd of attendants and courtiers surrounding the King went nearly silent as the Queen emerged from the Tower and made her way toward them.

Henry, too, had fallen silent. He had anticipated that several emotions would work to overcome him at the sight of his estranged wife. Resentment, for whatever witchcraft had drawn him to her seemed to be working on his people, who had once hated her, but had now won her her freedom with their willingness to rise up against their sovereign on her behalf. Betrayal, for the crimes she had committed, and anger, for the fact that she would now, in all likeliness, escape punishment.

He had even allowed for some measure of confusion, considering that the charges laid against his wife had been called into question and found invalid only several hours ago. Had she not betrayed him? Had she not committed vile, lecherous acts to secure her position and thereby put a bastard in the royal nursery? It seemed she had not, and worse still, her guilt had been fabricated to allow him to marry Jane.

Thoughts of Jane were not enough to fend off the emotions brought on as Anne stepped from the Tower.

Her tribulations were written on her face, for all to see. He noticed the pallor of her skin, doubtless from being denied the privilege of outdoor exercise, and the faint shadows beneath her eyes. In truth, Henry saw that she was slimmer than ever, and her eyes seemed darker than usual, those eyes for which she had been famed. Grief and impending death had elevated Anne, from merely beautiful to surreal.

He found, for one moment, that the sight of her had robbed him of the ability to breathe. Behind him, one of his attendants coughed very faintly, perhaps in hope of bringing an end to the awkward and tense silence which had descended. To cover his momentarily paralysis, he bowed deeply to his wife.

Anne, for her part, had stopped a short distance away, regarding him with those fathomless eyes. She answered his bow with a deep curtsy, from which she did not rise until he stepped forward and drew her up.

"My Queen," he said, noting the trembling of her hand in his, and wondering at it.

"Your Majesty," she returned. Briefly her eyes flickered to meet his, and then just as briefly darted away. She seemed disinclined to say anything more, and so Henry felt compelled to speak, to fill the silence.

"We have come to bring you home," said Henry, doing his best to inflect his tone with a measure of enthusiasm. Anne did not seem to notice—or worse, did not care.

He thought with a pang in his heart of Jane, her sweet smile and deferential manner. She would never be his wife, now. Was he fated now to have, as his wife and helpmeet, this ethereal and almost frightening creature?

He drew her stiff arm into the crook of his, and as he turned to lead her from the Tower the courtiers and attendants straightened from the deep obeisances they'd been obliged to make as Henry bowed to Anne. He found himself without anything to say—him, the King, whose word was law and who was well-known for being the centerpiece of a joyful and lively court! Though, even he had to admit, it had been some time since the court felt so warm and exciting. Not since he had first married Anne.

As they passed from the gates of the Tower, Henry noted that a sizeable crowd had gathered. Such a thing was not unexpected; it was, after all, the actions of the people which had caused Henry and his Privy Council to exonerate those accused. It had been, he recalled, a rather embarrassed meeting, considering all the work that had gone into gathering evidence against Anne. Thomas Cromwell had been summarily stripped of his title of Lord Chancellor and placed under arrest, and all the members of the Privy Council had latched onto him as a convenient scapegoat. As well they should, Henry thought indignantly. He would never have condoned Anne's arrest, imprisonment, and execution if he had not been presented with such compelling evidence of her guilt.

Though that vision he had held so closely over the previous weeks, of a son to continue his legacy, who'd inherit Jane's fair hair or lovely eyes, seemed to be fading by the moment.

The crowd seethed as they moved to the royal barge, which waited to convey the royal couple and favored courtiers back to Whitehall. Murmurs increased, and then several voices rose in unison.

"God save the Queen!"

"Hooray for justice! Justice and Queen Anne!"

If the commoners here were any good measure of the commoners' feelings all over the realm, then Anne's popularity had increased a thousandfold since she had been known as 'the harlot' and 'the concubine.' They rained wildflowers down on her, so that her path was strewn with them. And with the hand not resting on his arm she accepted a little posy of flowers from a peasant girl, with as much gravity as she'd accepted the sceptre and orb during her coronation.

All too soon they reached the dock; the crowd had followed them thither. He marveled at the outpouring of sentiment for this woman whom they had hated, not so very long ago, and wondered how different things might have been for his marriage if the people of England had greeted the sight of her in this way from the beginning.

And then Anne did a thing which startled him from his self-pitying musings. Just before beginning to proceed down the dock to the barge, she turned, withdrawing her hand from its resting place on his arm. She maneuvered carefully but gracefully, keeping hold of her little bouquet even as she gathered the sumptuous fabric of her gown in both hands and swept the gathered commoners as bewitching a curtsy as had ever been seen.

Henry did not know what he had expected from her; though he knew his wife to be in firm possession of the Howard pride and the Boleyn ambition, for which he had never in their earlier days faulted her, he had nevertheless expected a return—a retreat, even—to queenly hauteur.

Henry could not lie to himself, not with regard to this situation. He knew that if not for the people, Anne would be dead by now, and Henry well on his way to making Jane Seymour his wife and Queen. It seemed that Anne knew it, too.

What would they be to one another now, he wondered, as if in a daze, as he escorted Anne onto the barge. They could not be as they once were, he suspected. But now—would he call this stranger beside him 'enemy,' as well as 'wife'?

***

Anne passed the rest of that day as if in a haze. Her return to court was well enough, and she managed to say and do all the right things, until left to her own devices in her bedchamber. She could hear the movements of ladies in the more public rooms of her apartment, along with the more menial tiring women. By their efforts, her chambers, the Queen's chambers, would be reverted back to the way she'd had them originally.

For when she had arrived, her own chambers had seemed like the rooms of a stranger. All her lovely decorations, everything perfectly to her taste—gone, as if they had never been. She could imagine Henry wishing it that way, enjoying the creation of a fiction in which his married existence had gone from the faultless, pious Katherine of Aragon to the supposedly modest and demure Jane Seymour of Wolf Hall, skipping over Anne the Whore entirely.

Under her orders, the Queen's apartment was now hurriedly being set to rights, all her beloved objects being retrieved from whatever dusty storage room they'd been assigned to. Meanwhile, she reclined on her bed, having told her women that she was not to be disturbed. A book lay discarded at her side. Unable to focus on anything, still reeling from the mysterious forces which had wrested control over her life and dragged and shoved her hither and yon for so long, now, Anne chose instead to stare blankly out the window. This late May day was particularly gloomy. In a stunning and ever so amusing turn of events, the rain which had fallen on the day of her execution—confusingly, also the day of her exoneration—had not let up in the least, though now it had subsided to a light and steady drizzle. Anne was grateful for the fire in the hearth, for she was chilled to the bone.

Even her ladies needed putting to rights. The few women Anne could say she trusted, actually trusted, had been summarily dismissed, no doubt to make room for Mistress Seymour's choice of companions. As soon as Henry had left her on the threshold of the Queen's suite, soliciting her attendance at a feast in her honor set for tomorrow evening, she had wasted no time in making her preferences known. Out had been cast the women who were strangers to her; dispatched were myriad letters inviting back to court the women Anne felt could best safeguard her interests during these treacherous times. If the list were to be categorized by how much Anne truly trusted these women, it would be cut much shorter. But she had been put in such a weak position that she had to trust someone.

She cared not one whit of all the courtiers spoke disparagingly behind her back. Had they not been doing so for years and years? They could say what they wished. For so long, Anne had, in her most secret of hearts, wanted to be adored as Katherine had been. Back when she had thought herself the beloved of the King of England, all but untouchable, as safely ensconced in his love as a maiden in a castle. And she'd thought all she had to worry about was winning the love of all the Englishmen who cleaved to Katherine—Henry's confidence had been so strong

He was the heart of his people; what he loved, they loved. And, now… only their love, kindled at the very last minute, had spared her death at Henry's orders.

She'd have been gone, and her small and defenseless daughter would have been cast aside, doubtless branded the daughter of a treasonous whore and not fit to bear the title of Princess of England, to say nothing of remaining in the line of succession.

And even now, what would become of Anne and her Elizabeth? She knew better than to think that this reprieve had ended all of her troubles. Henry had been uncharacteristically unfocused during that awful, interminable trip from the River Thames to Whitehall. Perhaps he was just as caught up in events of the past several days as she and all the court seemed to be.

Hadn't all his grand plans been thrown into chaos by his own people. His promise to Mistress Seymour, to give her the Queen's crown. Her promise to him, to give him a son. She knew it as if she had lived it—and, well, hadn't she? Mistress Seymour was only walking a path that she, Anne, had created. Henry, who had been King since he was eighteen, did not appreciate being foiled.

No, Anne was not safe. Henry could try to divorce her, or even annul their marriage. By her own actions he was now the Supreme Head of the Church of England, and had that power. He could even have her killed—a push down a steep set of steps, a strap on a horse's tack left perilously loose. There were ways to rid oneself of an unwanted wife. The harshness of her breathing and the rapid flutter of her heartbeat brought her back to herself. She was panicking, and it would do her no good—nor Elizabeth.

Perhaps the people's love would hold, and make her safe. And if Henry sought annulment or divorce, well, she would no longer be Queen, and Jane Seymour's children would supplant Elizabeth… but she would be alive, and Elizabeth, if bastardized, would be hers alone…

Surely a living Marquess of Pembroke was preferable to a dead Anne, Queen of England.

And, truly, better to be any of those things than the wife of a man who would do to his beloved what Henry had done to her.

***

After a time, Anne saw fit to leave her self-imposed seclusion, and at least deigned to return to her presence chamber. It saddened her to see how sparsely her apartment was populated. It rather reminded her of the several weeks prior to her arrest, when all the court had seemed to sense her fall from favor and had gone instead to pay homage to Jane, who so clearly had captured the King's fancy. Those were lonely times, in their own way perhaps even lonelier than her stay in the Tower. At least, after her imprisonment, she no longer had to guess: she knew that the worst would indeed come to pass and could find what slim solace she had in praying and thinking of poor Elizabeth. There was some freedom in that. Before, as the King's unloved wife, she had to carry on as usual, pretending to all the world that her husband wasn't falling in love with another woman before everyone's fascinated gaze.

A flurry of movement at the door signaled a new arrival. Anne did not have to puzzle the identity of the newcomer for long, as the parting of the crowd revealed her sister's daughter, Catherine Carey.

Catherine had briefly attended Anne during her imprisonment in the Tower. Indeed, her niece was one of the only bright points in an otherwise dark experience; besides Catherine and Lady Kingston, Anne did not much like the other women who had been appointed to her. Not knowing whether association with Anne would hinder or help Catherine, Anne nevertheless had craved her young niece's company after she'd been released, and had requested that she join her at court as a maid-of-honor. She did not like to admit it, not even to herself, but the truth was that Anne was a lonely woman, now.

Catherine stepped forward and sank into a very pretty curtsy. Anne smiled upon her for a moment before noticing another figure behind her, golden-haired and dressed for travel, taller and more voluptuous than Catherine, who curtseyed deeply when she reached Catherine's side. Anne rose from her chair in surprise, her hand going to her throat, blinking back a sudden onrush of tears.

"Mary? Sister, is that you?"


	3. Chapter 3

It took Anne a long moment to recover, during which Mary murmured, "Yes, Your Majesty." Her fair head was still lowered, and Anne, remembering herself, bade her sister and niece to rise.

Anne gestured for a servant to fetch refreshments, and another to help Lady Stafford and Mistress Carey to remove their traveling cloaks. She gestured them into chairs close to the fire, for it still rained outside. Once everyone was settled, Anne dismissed the gathered ladies, and they retreated to the far side of the presence chamber. She looked upon her sister's face, which she hadn't seen in nearly two years.

"How came you to be here?" she asked without preamble. Catherine, content for the moment to let her mother speak, merely smiled faintly and sipped at the wine she had been given.

"Catherine came to me once she had been excused from bearing you company in the Tower," Mary responded. Her wide guileless eyes were fixed on Anne. "We could not have known they would—" She cut herself off, and started over. "She had spoken to me of you, neither of us knowing you would be exonerated. The things you said, your regrets, the confidences you'd made…"

Anne lowered her head for a moment. Her niece had come to her in the earliest days of her imprisonment, when Anne had been at her most hysterical. She had said a good many things, at the time, only half of which she could remember. She lifted her chin. "I see," she said quietly.

"Oh, no, Your Majesty—I mean Aunt Anne," Catherine said, seeming to trip over her own tongue in her rush to explain, and earnestly using the more familiar sobriquet Anne had asked her to use during their time together in the Tower. "It was not my intent to betray your trust. I only thought… My heart was so burdened by emotions…" She lifted one hand, fingers curled tightly together, to press against her chest, as if all those emotions still threatened to come pouring out at the least provocation.

Mary, as if to relieve her daughter, spoke up. "She knew how things stood between myself and all my family." She spared her daughter a warm glance. "Of course, I had long spoken to Catherine of my feelings. We were not close growing up, sister, I know. We were such different girls." Her eyes slid to the side for a moment.

Anne wondered if she was making an oblique reference to her rather sordid past. While it was generally accepted that Mary's youngest child, Henry Carey, was the legitimate issue of Mary's first husband, William Carey, she knew that there had been longtime speculation that Catherine was the product of the affair Mary had had with the King. Mary had never said, either way, and who would know better than Catherine's mother? Catherine was in a fair way to becoming a beauty, though it did not surprise Anne that any child of her sister's would grow up so comely. Mary was older than Anne, and yet the years had been kinder to Mary. She still glowed with health and good cheer, and her face was as lovely in her third decade of life as it had been when she'd been a young girl just new to the French court, catching the eye of the King of France.

The truth of Catherine's paternity made no difference to Anne, except to prove, perhaps, that it had not been  _ her _ fault that she had borne the King a daughter. Only one woman who had been with Henry had given him a living son, and yet even the bastard he'd sired on Bessie Blount, honored by the King with not one but two dukedoms, had been quite sick of late, if rumors were true.

"So we were," Anne acknowledged. "Quite different, though our father used us quite similarly." She swallowed another upwelling of emotion, and cursed herself for a fool. Had the Tower stripped away all her defenses? Would she never have the  _ sangfroid _ of the sainted Katherine of Aragon? Though she had not been born with a crown, she had long considered herself up to the task of wearing one, and yet she lacked that most crucial component of queenliness: the ability to mask her most unseemly emotions behind a graceful and gentle facade.

"Yes," Mary said, and Anne saw her sister's eyes widen a little, as if Anne had unknowingly hit on the crux of the issue Mary had come to speak to her about. "Yes, although to different ends—" and she made a gesture as if to encompass her own garb, which proclaimed her a soldier's wife, and Anne's, made of far richer fabrics. "I would rather not have been you for all the world, Anne," Mary said, and reached for Anne's hand. Startled, Anne let her hand be captured, and Mary pressed it. "Has he been to see you, yet? Father, I mean. Has he come?"

"He has not." Anne withdrew her hand, and curled it lightly into a fist. "You are the first of my kin who has come to see me, indeed the first visitor I have received since being restored."

"It is as I thought, then." Mary seemed disappointed. She took a deep breath, and had the look of someone weighing her words carefully before she released them into the world. "I know that my marriage to William Stafford caused the distance between myself and my family. I can admit that it was foolhardy, and you well know how difficult things were…" She trailed off, referring to the times, before Anne's downfall, that she had had to ask Anne for money—from a distance, via letters, as Anne had refused to see her after her second marriage. "You were generous, and for that I thank you. Though I would not trade William for any king or duke or," she shrugged, "someone papa would have approved of. He loves me well, Anne. I wish you could know what such love feels like."

Her tone of voice implied that she thought Anne would  _ never _ know that kind of love. Trapped as she was now, given the gift of her life and yet wedded to a man who had accused her of every base and immoral action imaginable, who sought to replace her with a woman who had not even half the talents and abilities Anne had been blessed with…

Anne closed her eyes briefly, and then opened them, meeting Mary's gaze. "Stay with me here at court, Mary. You, and Catherine," she said impulsively. She gave her niece a warm glance. "You will both be honored as my kin, though I cannot say how much it counts to be a Boleyn, these days, at court." She smiled mirthlessly. "I have been given a second chance, God alone knows what for, and I must do what I can to correct the many mistakes I have made… for however long I have left to correct them."

Mary glanced at her daughter. It was one thing, she thought, for Anne to be shaken enough after her time in the Tower and her near-execution at her husband's hands. It was another for Anne to admit to any wrongdoing, especially to her older sister. Anne would have been loath to admit it directly, but Mary had always suspected that Anne reckoned herself to be above Mary, who had been the mistress to not one but two kings, and who had retained the attention and esteem of neither. Catherine looked back at her, as if to say, 'See? Did I not tell you?'

Mary returned her gaze to Anne, and took a deep breath. Upon its release, she smiled. "Very well, sister. We will be happy to stay with you. Let us be sisters, true sisters, once more."

***

Time seemed to move slowly for Anne, however. As hateful May faded into lonely June, she reflected on the last few weeks. She had not seen Henry much since her homecoming, besides that rather banal banquet held in her honor not long after she had been restored to Whitehall. She and Henry had been stiff as strangers, and the courtiers, not knowing how to react for fear of offending the King, hardly reacted at all.

The speculation in their gazes was plain to see. She had been declared innocent, and indeed, the charges laid against her were so ridiculous as to strain credulity; and, knowing Henry, the courtiers could hardly credit the happiness by which he appeared to don his cuckold's horns when news of her supposed infidelities had become public. How would he rid himself of her, knowing that good Englishmen and Englishwomen had risen up in outrage on her behalf? Would he rid himself of her at all, or would he try to make use of her once more, as a vessel for an elusive son to be brought into the world?

And, of course, there were the baser speculations of the courtiers, who spoke so bluntly only when they could be assured of the utmost privacy. Was she to be consigned to a nunnery, was she to become the victim of a cunningly placed poison? Did the King hate her that much?

Anne strolled in the rose garden in the company of her ladies, who nevertheless kept their distance, knowing their mistress to be in one of the darkling moods she was lately so likely to fall into. A basket rested on one arm as she moved among the rose bushes, into which she placed the choicest blooms, of a mind to brighten her rooms with fresh bouquets, and, wanting to escape those same dreary rooms, choosing to attend to the task herself.

Her niece and sister had gone into the city to the house Anne had gotten for them, since Mary now had two small children by William Stafford for whom court was no place to be. While her two kinswomen spent most of their time with Anne at court, they nevertheless went quite frequently to see Master Stafford and the two young ones. It took very little for Anne to see that Mary was quite besotted with her husband, and he with her; she had been considering finding Stafford a place in her household, and finding governesses for the children, so that their little household could be moved closer to the palace, for the comfort of all. Mary would have her loved ones nearby, and Anne would have a group of people, albeit small, close to her whom she trusted.

Or very nearly trusted, anyway. She could not forget that her cowardly father had turned his back on his condemned children, the better to distance himself from becoming embroiled in the accusations, and her uncle, that schemer Norfolk, had been at the head of the trial that had condemned them. Trust was in short supply.

Anne noticed the silence only gradually, becoming aware of it as a dwindling and then a complete absence of the soft chattering hum of her ladies. Fat bumblebees droned over the blossoms, and a soft wind occasionally stirred the trees, breathing the heady June scent of rosebushes over the gardens, and the sounds of life in and around the palace carried distantly into the depths of the rose gardens, but as it grew, the silence seemed to drown everything else.

She turned slowly, feeling a lurching quake in the pit of her stomach. Soldiers, come to arrest her? Perhaps a hired killer, sent to carry out the task the executioner had been denied? One of her very own ladies, clutching a set of gardening shears, face twisted by malice and the desire to rid England of her so that she might occupy Anne's throne?

Neither of these sights awaited her, of course. The manic fear leached out of her as she took in the sight, and she even wasted a moment to chide herself over her paranoid flight of fancy. She saw none other than her father, Thomas Boleyn, the Earl of Wiltshire, approaching steadily. His silver hair caught and held the sunlight, and his face seemed ages older, in the lines around his eyes and the set of his mouth. He had always been a man with grand pretensions, but now he looked—well,  _ diminished _ , somehow. Her blood chilled a little at the thought that he was coming to beg her forgiveness, to ingratiate himself once more with the Queen of England, the daughter whom he had once sold to satisfy his own ambitions and then had heartlessly condemned as her star began to fall and another's rose in its place.

Her eyes slid by him, and she saw that he held the hand of a small, richly dressed figure. The little girl clutched her grandfather's hand, though, only until the moment that she saw the object of her searching eyes; and those eyes, Tudor blue and bright in their intelligence and intensity, lit up. The little girl dropped the Earl's hand and sped past him, and even managed to evade the grasping hand of her horrified governess, who admonished in a quietly panicked voice that carried in the expectant hush, "Princess, no! Don't forget your lessons!"

Elizabeth ignored those admonishments and ran straight into the open arms of her mother, who had dropped the basket of roses and the gardening shears as her grasp loosened with shock. The reunited mother and daughter wept together as they embraced.


	4. Chapter 4

To Anne, it was hard to say how long she stood there, kneeling in the grass with her daughter in her arms, the two of them weeping softly at the sweetness of being reunited. The sweet scent of Elizabeth's red hair, the smell of her sun-warmed skin, her tiny, precious body, garbed in a charming little gown she could remember designing; all these things she felt she had once taken for granted, and now knew that she never could, not when the feel of her child in her arms had been denied her, almost for ever and ever.

"Mama," the little girl whimpered. "Mama, you're alive. They said you would be killed, they said you had done something so very bad that you should die…" Shudders wracked her, and Anne squeezed her very tightly before pulling back. She withdrew a handkerchief from her sleeve and dabbed at the sweetly upturned face, wiping it free of tears.

"No, my love. They were lies, all lies, and you can see that I am here. God in His grace has opened the eyes of those who accused me of doing such bad things, and showed them my innocence." Anne closed her eyes very briefly against that all-too-familiar sensation of rising tears. She might cry in the privacy of her own chamber, when she was all alone save for the ladies she trusted the very most, but here, in the gardens, with her father and all her ladies-in-waiting looking on, she most certainly would not. Her dark eyes sprang open almost immediately, and feasted themselves on the visage of her daughter, trying to commit that beloved little face to memory. "Now I shall always be with you, darling girl. I pray that it will be so."

"Who told lies about the Queen of England?" Elizabeth's face, flushed with emotion, twisted into anger and dismay. "Lady Bryan has said that telling lies about anyone is a sin, and so telling lies against the  _ Queen _ …" She fell silent as Anne shushed her.

"This is for grown-ups to worry about, my love. You mustn't worry, ever again. You must now only be your mama's and papa's most beloved jewel…"

Elizabeth's expression darkened again. "Papa," she said, just that one word, and Anne's heart fell into her stomach.

Quietly, so quietly, she said, "Papa has seen that I could not be so wicked, and he has turned his ear away from those who would spread such lies." Anne knew that  _ she _ was lying, right now. She had no way of knowing whether Henry had forsaken his Seymour whore or those who would happily see Anne right into an unmarked grave. But surely God would forgive these lies, if they made an innocent child rest easier at night? If they kept Elizabeth safe from the wrath of her father, who had turned against the Lady Mary Tudor when she denied him her submission and her oath of loyalty to Anne as Queen and Elizabeth as heir? There was no telling what such a man would do…

Such a man whose autocratic tendencies  _ she _ , Anne, had helped to unleash.

She pushed all those thoughts away, thoughts of the Lady Mary and Henry and betrayal and darkness, and focused instead on Elizabeth, here and safe.

"Your Majesty," ventured an uncharacteristically timid voice. "You must please forgive the Princess Elizabeth for her excitement. She would not have forgotten how to greet her mother and Queen if not for the joy of seeing you again."

Anne saw that it was Lady Margaret Bryan, her own aunt through the Howards and Elizabeth's governess, and one-time governess to the Lady Mary and Henry Fitzroy, too. She rose, conscious of her dignity as Queen, and nodded graciously as Lady Bryan sank into a deep curtsey, though she kept Elizabeth's little hand in her own.

"There is no forgiveness needed. We thank you for bringing the Princess to us, Lady Bryan, and of course we give our kinswoman our warmest and most affectionate greeting." Warmest and most affectionate might have been an exaggeration, considering the stilted way Anne knew herself to be behaving. But Lady Bryan would not dare to comment on it, and instead the royal governess made another curtsey at being given such an honor.

Lady Bryan, whose expression showed some misgiving over her and her charge's participation in whatever they had been enlisted, gave way at the approach of the Earl of Wiltshire, which seemed meek indeed; at least, as meek as a man like Thomas Boleyn could look.

Anne, one hand still gently clasping Elizabeth's little fingers in hers, watched his approach coolly.

To her surprise, her father went down on first one knee, then two, moving quite slowly. Anne, more suspicious now than she had ever been in her life, watched his slow descent skeptically. True, her father was nearing his sixtieth decade of life, and was quite an old man, as his silvery hair showed. But surely he wanted to make himself look weak and vulnerable, to endear himself to the daughter he'd forsaken, to make her more inclined to welcome him back into her good graces.

"My lord Wiltshire," Anne said, after she had gotten tired of seeing her father on his knees, almost certain that God would forgive her this small sin.

If her father saw the bolt of wrathful satisfaction that lanced through her eyes, he did not show it. He rose, and folded his hands together in front of him, almost like a supplicant. "Anne… Your Majesty… I beg you to forgive me for not coming to you earlier."

A scathing retort on her tongue, Anne, heedless of the fact that so many others looked on in fascination, stopped herself at the sound of Elizabeth's little voice piping up. "My lord grandfather came to me at Hatfield, Mama, and brought me here to see you." Though her one hand still remained in Anne's grasp, she buried her other hand in the folds of Anne's skirts, clutching the sumptuous fabric as other children clutched their most beloved toys.

Anne took a deep breath, attempting to expel the vitriol she'd wanted to unleash on her father. Though the presence of her ladies would not have stopped her, all things considered, she was glad for Elizabeth's presence. For her daughter's sake, it was enough to rein in her infamous temper. There was more at stake than giving loud vent to her ill feelings.

"I can understand your reluctance, for surely you did not want to become tainted by association and thus arrive by way of the Traitors' Gate; and not wanting to risk any other entrance lest you endanger that carcass of which you are so fond, you kept your distance."

Boleyn's eyes lowered, and his hands twisted nervously around themselves.

"Quite so, Your Majesty," he said quietly.

With her other hand, Anne beckoned her women to retreat and give them at least the semblance of privacy, out of earshot.

"I have become a most unnatural father," the Earl continued. "Every parent wants their child to succeed, but when I saw the dizzying heights you could reach by your beauty and intelligence, I was blinded to little else."

"Indeed," Anne said. And, lest he think himself forgiven, she said, "Indeed, you achieved very much by virtue of your daughters becoming the scandal of Christendom. God forgive the Boleyns our pride and our avarice. It nearly cost us everything. It may still."

"No, no," her father hastened to reassure her. "You see, the King bade me fetch Elizabeth and bring her to you." It seemed that Boleyn had desperately latched onto this remarkable fact as incontrovertible proof that the King wanted a reconciliation with his wife and her family.

Anne froze. She could feel her the rage of her pulse increase in her throat. "Is it so?" she asked almost inaudibly.

Boleyn nodded, eyes almost feverish. "You see, my darling girl, he wants to make you happy. He understands the new way of things. He has even been to Hever, to see George, and even now the King is granting him a divorce from his marriage to that odious Parker woman who bore such vile testimony against Your Majesty."

Anne nodded slowly. She found herself bereft of words. She could barely imagine Henry in the same room as her brother; Henry speaking to his brother-in-law who had been so high in his favor, and who'd almost lost his head to Henry's desire to rid himself of his wife, that man's sister. She wondered if Henry could look George in the eye now without shame, and almost laughed at her folly. Henry was without shame.

"And what is this new way of things?"

"That you are his wife forevermore." Boleyn looked as satisfied as a cat with a bird between its paws. "He cannot rid himself of you without risking an uprising. He has been used to the love of his people, and his pride cannot stand the blow of losing that love."

"There was once a time," Anne mused, "in which he could not stand the blow of losing  _ my  _ love."

Boleyn shook his head. "He will find his way back to you, Anne. He knows now that he has no choice."

Anne turned her head to watch Elizabeth, who had bent to examine the basket of roses Anne had discarded.

"And me? Do I have a choice?"

She asked it rhetorically. Seeing the little girl with the reddish-gold hair of her Plantagenet forebears, Anne knew well that she had no choice. She was as trapped as Henry, if not more so.

"We will make this right, Anne," Boleyn said quietly. " _ I  _ will make this right. What happened before...it will never happen again."

Anne hummed a noncommittal response. It was just like her father to make promises he could not keep.

***

Anne toyed with the note she had just finished reading, her eyes watching, but not really seeing, the candlelight burning on a nearby table. She had held this pose for some time, now, thinking very hard. Around her, her ladies and the serving women they ordered about worked to bring her presence chamber up to the Queen's exacting standards.

It was now no secret that the King had requested a private dinner with his wife, the first time they had dined together in so long that memories of previous shared meals remained dim and shadowy in her memory. In truth, it was more appropriate to say that he had  _ told _ Anne he was coming to dine with her. The note he had penned in his own hand, no less, was everything one could wish: formal, respectful, even a little chivalrous in tone. The King requested the pleasure of dining with the Queen in her apartments. Everything one could wish, indeed.

Disappointment and anxiety warred with each other, deep in the pit of her belly. She had planned on dining with Elizabeth in the nursery. Not only was there the brightening and jollifying of her presence chamber that needed to be done, but also the dispatch of a page to bring news of her change in plans to Lady Bryan and Elizabeth, that they need not expect the Queen this evening.

She sat perfectly still, worrying the note from her husband between her fingers as her closest ladies garbed her appropriately for the coming ordeal. In a strange turn of events, her sister Mary and niece Catherine had picked out her dress, a gorgeous satin gown trimmed in the finest lace, brilliantly red to complement the Queen's rubies. Anne had protested, at first, saying that the ensemble showed her desperation, grasping at a gaudy display of her royal status, and that it was hardly queenly to peacock around in that manner.

"Well," Catherine had said in her charmingly frank way, "you are the Queen, and they're your jewels."

Anne had looked at her sister, formerly the King's mistress, and her niece, reputed to be the King's bastard daughter, and shook her head wonderingly a the strange web she and Henry, indeed the Tudors and Boleyns as a whole, had woven.

"Consider them your armor," Mary had advised.

After gazing long and hard into her looking glass, and seeing the dark-eyed, royally garbed, reed-slim creature staring back at her, Anne agreed. "Armor indeed," she said dryly. "Let us pray I have no need of it."


	5. Chapter 5

Henry was more nervous for this face-to-face meeting with Anne than he’d dare to admit. Only within the most secret part of his mind would he admit it to himself, the part he normally reserved for storing, and locking away, his most deep-seated insecurities.

It was where the ghosts of his father and his older brother dwelled.

It would not do to let those insecurities see the light of day, of course. He was the King, and not only that, the heart and soul of a glittering, exciting court, sovereign lord of one of the most powerful kingdoms in Christendom. To show weakness was to feed the enemies he was certain he still had.

There were those who wanted his bastard daughter Mary named heir; indeed, probably those who wanted Mary on the throne in his place, since he’d turned his back on popish things and declared himself Head of the Church of England.

And now, a wife he neither wanted nor, now that he was stuck with her, was able to control.

He had figured sharing a meal would set the mood nicely. Any awkwardness could be smoothed over by attending to the food, which would also provide small talk in case conversation grew thin.

He was surprised to feel a pang of sadness, that it had come to this: trying to manipulate the setting to avoid tension and ungraceful moments, when once he had moved heaven and earth to possess this woman, whom he had considered his perfect match.

Briefly, an image passed over his mind’s eye. It was the face of Jane, whom he had bade go to Wolf Hall to await the execution of Anne so that nothing of the whole tawdry episode could mar her reputation. In the ensuing weeks since then, he had written to her, assuring her of his continued love, though well he knew that such declarations would remain hollow so long as Anne lived and called herself his wife.

But now, what could he do? The people had risen up for Anne in a way that they had not done for Katherine, a princess twice over and a much beloved Queen, though he knew she had no right to that title.

Now, he found himself in the same situation, and couldn’t help but smile grimly at the irony. Wed to a wife he no longer wanted, longing for another while circumstances made it difficult for him to act upon his desires. He felt very handily tricked: he had forsaken the Pope to get Anne, and now his pride would not let him come pleading for the Pope to take him back into Holy Mother Church so that he could dissolve his marriage and take a new wife.

He had made himself head of the Church of England, and now he was very neatly trapped by his own machinations. He had the power to dissolve his marriage, but could not, for fear of opening old wounds and sowing discord the likes of which the country hadn’t seen since the Wars of the Roses.

All that he had was the ability to bargain. He could only hope that Anne, spiteful wench that she could be, would see things his way and agree to his terms.

Every bit of his future happiness depended upon it.

Roused from his dark thoughts by the announcement of his arrival within the Queen’s presence chamber, Henry lifted his head and passed within. There, Anne and her ladies were all lowered in deep curtseys. It took him somewhat aback to see Anne’s obeisance; but, he reminded himself sternly, they were no longer those young lovers who came passionately together at every meeting, regardless of the honors due their stations, for the sheer joy of being reunited at last.

His Queen, who had been poised over the precipice of her demise, owed him this show of submission, for hadn't he been the one to welcome her back to Whitehall and bid her father, that schemer Thomas Boleyn, to bring Elizabeth from Hatfield to soften Anne up?

He bade Anne and her ladies to rise, and on doing so, he had to admit that he was gratified to see the shadow of fear lurking in her eyes. Her ordeal in the Tower had marked her; she had regained her healthful looks, and even he had to admit that she was as lovely as ever, but her eyes, those dark pools into which he’d fallen and drowned so many times, were as afraid as they were mysterious.

Perhaps her ordeal in the Tower had taught her humility, too. He could cast her down as far as he had once raised her. Perhaps she didn’t believe it, then; but she did now.

The servants moved in a well-harmonized routine to see that the royal pair were seated and comfortable, and then, at Henry’s gesture, most of them left. Only a few remained to wait upon them, and they waited at a distance. The room was as private as one could hope.

Finding that he was ravenous, Henry dug into his meal with gusto. It gave him time to savor the lovely creations of the kitchens, and time to think on how to approach the woman sitting in front of him. He had shared countless meals with her over the last decade, and felt himself at a loss nonetheless.

After a short while, he glanced up to see Anne picking at her food. Some had been eaten, but he was far ahead of her in terms of consumption. He wondered why he felt suddenly ashamed of his gluttony, in front of this darkling beauty with the face of a statue and the slim, tense shoulders.

Putting down his knife, Henry wiped his hands and cleared his throat. He didn’t like how nervous it made him sound, not to mention how very unlike himself he felt, and so he plunged ahead.

“My dear,” he said into the thick silence. “I hope you will tell me that you are settling in very well.”

He saw her blanch a little, as if his words had been a lunge.

“If that is the case,” Anne said slowly, as she, too, put down her knife and wiped her hands on a richly embroidered cloth, “I would not dare to oppose Your Majesty’s wish. I am settling in very well, thank you.” She dabbed at her mouth and then lifted her goblet for a fortifying drink.

It took Henry a moment to understand, but on doing so he felt a low burn of anger ignite within his belly. He could admit to himself that he did not really care how well she was settling in; at this point, what he needed was the semblance of unity, rather than the reality of it. But her defiance, hidden perfectly within submission, irritated him. “The truth, Anne, if you please.”

He had been married to this woman for three years, and loved her dearly for many more. He knew her expressions. And he saw now a few different ones warring on the canvas of her features: anger, fear, and at last, a sad resignation.

“I have settled in well enough. Whitehall is certainly more comfortable than a humble casket in an unmarked grave.”

Henry’s stomach lurched, and he had to look away, for fear that she would see the rage and the shame in his eyes. Not that she cared to look right now, for her dark gaze was fixed stonily on her plate.

You are the King, Henry told himself sternly, in a voice rather like his father’s. Act like it.

“Quite so.”

Her eyes flashed to his, bespeaking their outrage...and just as quickly, they lowered again.

He continued, so piqued by that show of demure submission that he was unable to stop himself, “Would you not agree that it is quite a bit more than you deserve?”

The silence dragged for a moment, and then Anne said, “Why so, Your Majesty? After all this, you cannot expect me to think you still believe me guilty of those abjectly horrifying crimes which you had your creatures dream up?”

Henry was about to contradict her, and most heartily, but upon opening his mouth he seemed to deflate a little. “No,” he said finally, and realized with a pang that it was true. “But you can see now that we will have no sons. And you must know that I would try to have any sons with you, even if I could. Think you I could lie with the woman who led me on a merry chase, promised me a boy, and gave me a girl and only dead children after, and then…”

He swallowed.

“And then impugned my manhood so that all the court was set to believe so ill of their King?”

The silence, again. He saw her eyes close, as if pained and shamed, and felt a vicious stab of satisfaction. So wounding him had wounded her too, eh? So she could still feel shame, this jumped-up granddaughter of merchants and mayors?

“Did I lie?” she said quietly. “You lost your desire for me as soon as you had me. As I had feared, Henry! As I had told you, the day I said I would not become your  _ maîtresse-en-titre _ ! And then, wedded to my own heart’s greatest desire, who could have known that I’d have been better off as your mistress? For you’d have no reason to kill me then, simply push me to the side to make way for your next disposable pleasure. Surely the loss of a lover could not hurt so much as the loss of a husband. If only Mistress Seymour knew how lethal wifehood was, and how very fortunate whoredom!”

The last word rang out in his face. Anne was panting, now, from the exertion of the emotion her speech had elicited. And she had told herself she’d keep calm, for Elizabeth’s sake, for her family’s! To be the cold, calculating wench he and the rest of the world thought her would be a great relief, and Anne was greatly disappointed in herself that cold and calculating she could not be. Not now.

The words had been said, and as regretful as she was that they came out in this manner, that she’d allowed him to drive her to tongue-loosening anger, she knew them to be the truth.

His face had grown very still, his complexion flushing, a sure sign that the Tudor temper had nearly boiled over. She steeled herself, not knowing what to expect and willing herself not to cringe.

Henry cleared his throat loudly, and swallowed. “So you mean to say you truly loved me, after all this, after everything? You must know that I know everything. Your father planned it all, your father and your brother acting in concert, pimping their daughter and sister to gain favor and titles and riches, all things I willingly laid at their feet on your behalf.” He made a disgusted sound. “No, no, you’ll not catch me up in that web of lies again, my dear spider. You’ll find I’m not such easy prey, now. I know everything. It seems we must make our peace, or something at least resembling it, but no. No. You’ll not make me a fool again.”

Anne’s mouth curled. “You are more blind than you know, Your Majesty, if you think it is not a web woven by every noble family at court. Your precious Seymours are no exception. Do you think it a coincidence that she put herself in your way after the first babe I lost? Do you think her cow eyes and whispers weren’t meant to lure you from me? And the others, even the ones I am sure I don’t know a thing about? All of them, Henry. It is a game we played, all of us. But I lost,” she said bitterly, looking away. “I lost because I fell in love with you, and I found I could not share you nor look the other way.”

Henry pushed himself up from the table, rattling the plates, and at his thunderous expression the women who’d withdrawn to the other side of the chamber hurried out it like a gaggle of startled swans.

“You call me blind? You dare to call the King blind?” he thundered.

“The Queen does so dare,” she said, settling back in her chair, finding that the more he raged the calmer she became.

He towered over her chair, hands on the armrests, his grip making the heavy wood creak. Anne felt a thrill race through her at the thought of the strength in his hands as she stared up into his eyes. They darkened even as she watched, and her heart stuttered.

“Damn you, you witch,” he said raggedly, and dragged her up and against him.


	6. Chapter 6

In another place and time, Henry knew that he would have been captivated by the look in Jane Seymour's pale eyes. Within them, he saw such joy and devotion as he'd never known from a woman. So he would have once thought. Now, not even those eyes which he'd longed to lose himself in could distract him from his uncertainty.

He had left for Wolf Hall at the crack of dawn, spending what appeared to be a wonderful day amid the most obliging Seymours. Unlike London, Wiltshire was peaceful and pressureless. No mobs yelling God save the Queen, no ugly glares sent his way, even if the Seymour servants seemed to send him sidelong glances he caught out of the corner of his eye.

But Henry, for all his stubbornness (and he could admit his own stubbornness; could not deny it, on the familial example of that iron-willed lady, Margaret Beaufort, to whose stubbornness the fledgling Tudor dynasty owed its throne) had had his eyes opened. No thanks to Anne.

After their coupling, which he could have blamed on his succubus of a wife but felt it beneath him to lie to himself so blatantly, he had been slow to sleep and early to wake. He had fled London at a pace meant to outrun his jumbled thoughts, with only a few servants and no standard-bearer. What he found at Wolf Hall was a balm to his afflicted nerves and divided heart.

Which made him suspicious.

Jane's father, Sir John, was all that could be desired in a host. If Henry had asked Jane to dance naked across the manor green, Sir John would have asked what music His Majesty wished the display to be set to. There was a desperation underlying the old knight's behavior that did not sit well with Henry. Beyond the normal obsequiousness any courtier showed their sovereign, he sensed a drowning man clinging to his last hope.

Edward, the eldest Seymour sibling, was as cool as ever. Henry felt his eyes assessing every move made toward Jane, as if the strength of Henry's affection for her could be weighed and a plan developed based upon observation. The younger brother, Thomas, seemed to have merrily taken up the role of jester, steering conversation toward lighthearted subjects, especially subjects that drew favorable attention to Jane.

And, oh, Jane.

She was everything he wanted. Gentle, kind, yielding; where Anne was tempestuous and brilliant as a shard of glass, and just as cutting. It gutted him to suspect it was all a lie. No doubt Jane possessed all those qualities. He had to believe it. He was certain of it. But the way her father, brothers, sisters, and all the servants watched her… it was as if watching a game for strategies and tactics. They all depended on her to cement their futures. And she had to be aware.

Had she been advised by Sir John and her brothers, as Anne had been coached by her Boleyn and Howard relations, on the best way to attract and keep his attention? Did it really matter to him if she had, considering the admiration he saw in her every expression toward him? Was it only the natural order of things that the family of a king's prospective sweetheart seek to sweeten the connection with careful words and advice?

As he walked with Jane in the garden, her family maintaining a discreet distance so as to give them a veneer of privacy while still providing some supervision, he wondered what Anne would say. He could well imagine the curl of her lovely mouth, the roll of her dark eyes, as she said, Look how well your sweet simple strumpet plays the part of an innocent, Henry. She hangs on your arm as if she had no legs of her own. Watch her now, see if she doesn't try to reel you in. See the panic blossom in her eyes if she catches just a hint that your ardor may be cooling. So what if your little milkmaid is eager to please you. She's eager to please her family, as well. Everyone plays the game, my love.

"I am so happy to be here with you, Your Majesty," Jane said, beaming up at him. "I have missed you so."

Henry stifled a curse, and willed himself to relax. He was in some pain, he could admit it to himself; what he thought would be a passing wound from the joust at which he'd worn Jane's favor and ended up nearly dying had turned into an injury which caused him to suffer increasingly every day. Until lately, he had done fairly well to have it inconspicuously wrapped beneath his garments and pretend it didn't exist, but now, walking with Jane, it seemed to plague him all the more. His very heartbeat echoed its ache.

At his prolonged silence, Jane wilted. She cast her gaze downward and to the side, as if shamed by her own eagerness to please him. He was reminded of the little dog Anne had loved so dearly before it died in an accident, who had given just such a look when he was chastised for wrongdoing. Curse it, he could not help but hear Anne's mocking voice. She plays the game sloppily, my love. She thinks she has overstepped herself and now seeks to hear your reassurances. And her family! Why, don't they look as if they could wring her neck at the disapproval they think she's put into your expression?

They did, indeed. Edward Seymour looked ready to step forward and intervene, and Thomas, the less steady of the lot, frowned his discomfort. Sir John looked mildly alarmed. The other women, Jane's sisters, fluttered and whispered among themselves, and at the sight of his gaze raking over them, seemed to preen a little under the attention. Jane shrank further.

You stayed away for so long after my release from the Tower. Now they cannot be sure of your affection for the girl. Which of the others has been assigned to catch your eye, in the event of your milkmaid's failure? Who have they named as her replacement?

Henry was too disgusted to tell. Disgusted with himself, most of all, for his blindness, and for wishing he could have remained blind.

"I am glad to be here, too, Mistress Jane," he said stiffly, and wished it was the truth.

***

All along the ride to London, Henry heard his wife's voice. He would have called himself insane, blamed her, named her a sorceress; but he knew the truth, and hers was the voice of a truth he could no longer unsee. He had thought himself beloved by his people, all these years. Hadn't he been heralded as a golden king, a harbinger of a new era for England, upon his accession? A farewell to the days of civil war, and the days of his father's parsimony and gloom and distrust, and a welcome to youth, and joy, and plenty?

But that had been ages ago. He heard that relentless voice again: _You have a son grown and married, and a daughter grown, too, never mind that they're both bastards. You are not young. You have buried one wife, and had tried to bury another. The golden days are past, and the silver days are upon you._

If he hadn't been in the saddle, feeling the wind through his hair, seeing the rays of sunlight through the clouds, the thought would have driven him mad. Instead, he felt a strange sadness for all the time that had passed.

When he arrived at Whitehall, it was later than he had thought. He went to the suite of rooms assigned to Elizabeth, needing to see that bright little child, in the hope that closeness to youth would bring a little of that same youth to him, too. Upon being announced, he saw that he had just missed thee customary flurry which his unexpected presence brought to any gathering. And he saw that Anne had chosen this day to dine with Elizabeth.

She was a strange one, Anne… in some ways she had taken so well to queenly hauteur, knowing and demanding everything that was her due. In others, she retained the beliefs and customs in which she had been raised. He recalled her desire to feed baby Elizabeth herself, and his harsh dismissal of the idea. No, it wasn't queenly to nurse one's own child, for many reasons he could think of. But Anne was a wonderful mother, in some ways moreso than Katherine had been. Katherine had expected to relinquish her child, even if she did not like it, and as much as she had loved Mary, knowing that royal women did not raise their progeny themselves, knowing that their place was at court. Anne had been raised outside royal protocol, and her attachment to Elizabeth was strong.

He was shocked to find himself thinking that she was the mother his mother would have been, and probably had wanted to be, if not for fate and history and the Lady Margaret Beaufort. Elizabeth of York had been a princess before she became a queen, but it struck Henry now how lonely his mother had been, and how cruel it had been for Henry the Seventh to allow Lady Margaret to rule her daughter-in-law the way she had. He knew that his mother had loved him more than Arthur, had considered Arthur the child of England and he, her Harry, the child she had had for herself.

He thought he knew what it had cost her, and reckoned that whatever price she paid for My Lady the King's Mother to be kept from her children, her crown and her station had more than made up for it. Now, seeing Queen and Princess together, he realized that he didn't know at all.

Like Elizabeth would be Queen if he did not provide England with a boy, he realized with a start that his own mother, Edward IV's eldest surviving legitimate child, could have been Queen of England in her own right.

If any had been willing to fight for her.

All those gathered had risen and made their obeisances to him, and he swallowed thickly as he gestured for them to rise. There was a time Anne would not have curtseyed; instead, she'd have risen and come to him, or she'd have held out a hand and offered a coy smile, wife to husband, not queen to king. As she rose from her curtsey, he saw the look in her eye, and wondered if she knew where he'd been, and with whom he had spent his day.

Henry gave her a courteous nod and made a small bow of his own. He didn't pause to linger over her reaction, but rather joined them at table, where an extra setting had been placed with an explosion of haste racing against his arrival, as soon as he had made it known upon his arrival that he would join them and a page had raced ahead to make the Princess's table ready for an unexpected guest.

Elizabeth greeted him with a sunny smile, and he found himself gratified to be on the receiving end of it. He could only hope that, as she grew older, stories of the trouble between him and Anne would not complicate his relationship with Elizabeth, as his Great Matter had done with Mary.

"You have come to dine with us," said Anne. He understood the surprise behind the inane statement. Elizabeth was, as yet, too young to join the court for meals, and he had heretofore not made it a habit to dine with young children, no matter how beloved. Not to mention that most of the fare was more bland than court delicacies tended to be, given that rich diets were unhealthy for children.

"Quite so," Henry responded, making himself comfortable. "How charming, to dine en famille."

Anne gave him one of her dark-eyes inscrutable glances, and he tucked into his meal, quizzing Elizabeth on her French between bites. She was a brilliant child, as brilliant as Mary had been at that age. He found, halfway through the meal, that he really was charmed.

What a lovely little portrait of a young family they must make, Henry thought. Not precisely young, true… he could not delude himself anymore, thanks to Anne, and he was aware that he turned five-and-forty at the end of that strange June, and Anne turned six-and-thirty later in the summer. They were neither of them young anymore. All that time spent waiting for the Great Matter to resolve itself satisfactorily haunted him, not only for the carnal reasons which had preoccupied him at the time but also for the passing of Anne's most fertile years, and her unwillingness to yield to him at that time. Nonetheless, they did make a charming portrait now: Anne with her hair still dark and shimmering beneath the French hood she wore to such lovely effect, Elizabeth with her bonny bright curls so like his when he was that age…

Anne caught him looking at her, and for a moment, it was years ago, when he was a younger man with a long and lean body and she was the only thing he saw. The hot look in her eyes nearly undid him, in a way he hadn't been undone since, even before her, he had first rutted with a serving girl before Katherine had called herself his Queen, since he first came to know what it was to die and be reborn in the arms of a woman.

With an effort they both turned their attention to Elizabeth, and the joy of her scintillating presence redirected that burning thing that seemed it would always be between them, though it was not extinguished.

***

"I will come to you tonight," her husband said quietly to her, after they had both put a very contented Elizabeth to bed.

They seemed to have fallen in together after leaving Elizabeth's chambers―she had protested vociferously that, being nearly four years of age, she could no longer abide her quarters being referred to as a "nursery." Anne had nearly fallen victim to the quaintness of their domestic little evening: the doting papa and loving mama lavishing their precocious little daughter with all the attention she deserved. She was feeling rather more at peace than she had been in months, before her arrest and her fears of abandonment and the loss of their boy brought on by the Seymour trull's adulterous advances. If she did not feel quite like a beloved wife and Queen, then she felt like a contented mother, sure in her estranged husband's affection for their daughter, hopeful for Elizabeth's continued favor with her father.

And, she dared to admit only to herself, rather intrigued by Henry's moods. He was by turns good-humored and brooding, subdued and charming… and she could not mistake the look in his eyes which he bestowed upon her when he thought she wasn't looking.

It entertained her for a while to playact with him, to pretend that the passionate overture of the evening before had not taken place. If she knew Henry, and she fancied that she did, after all this time, she knew that such coyness and nonchalance would madden him as no pretense of innocence ever could. As much as he wanted to think he craved sweetness and simplicity, Anne knew better.

But saying that he would come to her bed? As if he could order her, the way that he was used to ordering everyone; as if nothing had ever happened; as if she were not Anne Boleyn, the king's obsession, the woman who had driven him to the brink of madness almost at the cost of her own head? She imagined him saying I will come to you tonight to old dead Katherine, to simple and uncomplicated Jane Seymour, even to Bessie Blount or, God in heaven, her sister Mary, who had been his mistress for years.

"Am I at your beck and call?" she said. She meant it to be teasing, but when it left her mouth, it did so with a heaviness that belied any lightheartedness.

Henry stopped. She saw him take a breath, saw his pain and the way he favored his injured leg when he stood. He met her eyes after a long moment. "I am the King," he said quietly.

And there was the truth of it. It was undeniable. They were all at his beck and call. Henry answered only to God, and Anne imagined that it was easy for him to reconcile his wants and needs with God's plans.

Here was a man who well loved jollity, who was bluff and bonny and gay, hail-fellow-well-met. Unlike most men, the louder he was, the more at ease; the quieter, the more dangerous.

"Even the Queen serves at your pleasure," she acknowledged with a tilt of her head, knowing that she was treading on hazardous footing.

His brilliant blue eyes shone, heightened by temper and pain. "Especially the Queen."

Anne regarded him steadily, though her pulse fluttered in her neck. Her little neck, as she had proclaimed to Master Kingston. Her nostrils flared, like a foxhound scenting its quarry, or a songbird scenting a thunderstorm. Predator or prey, she never knew which.

"And did Mistress Seymour serve at your pleasure?" she asked, not liking the heightened pitch in her voice but unable to stop it. She remembered all the times he had warned her to close her eyes and endure his infidelity, ' as more worthy persons had done,' and wondered how Katherine of Aragon could have withstood the thought of this man's hands on another woman's body.

Henry's gaze darkened. She had hit a sensitive spot, she saw, and his reaction was like a flood of ice through her veins.

"What is it to you?" he said roughly. "I am the King, and you, by God's doing or otherwise, are my Queen."

Before she knew what he was about, she saw him step forward, looming over her in the corridor, likely one of the same they had flitted through and flirted in during their long years of courtship. She noted with some very faint amusement that their retinues had drawn so far back that they appeared to be alone. Wise of them, she thought dimly, before his bulk was upon her, pressing her back into the cold stone, his angry lips on hers.

The kiss was a bombardment of sensation. She hardly knew whether to throttle him or caress him, and so she settled for fisting her hands in his doublet. The wall dug into her back, and she felt her hood tip askew and fall off her head completely, onto the floor. His hands were at her waist, squeezing her hips beneath the thick layers of her garments. One of his hands tangled in her hair. She felt her eyes roll back in her head and heard herself moaning like any common wanton as his lips left hers and drifted to the neck he had been so eager to sever, suckling on the pulse he had considered it his heart's greatest desire to silence, mere weeks before.

With a great gasp she pushed him off, and he stumbled but caught himself, too wild-eyed and frantic to note what must have surely been a painful jolt of his wounded leg.

They stared at each other across the space of a few feet, which might as well have been a chasm. Both their chests heaved, and both sets of eyes watched each other as if they had never before met in their lives.

"Perhaps you will find her bed more welcoming than mine, then," Anne said coldly, after the silence had grown thick enough to cut with a knife. "If we all serve at the King's pleasure, then it hardly matters where that pleasure is taken."

Henry growled. He actually growled. "You had best take care," he said lowly, his expression darkening like a thundercloud. "Your life might have been spared but I am still the King, and it is I who rule here, not you."

"Oh, yes," Anne said just as quietly, her eyes brimming with hatred and a thin sheen of unshed tears. "You have raised me high, and you can drag me low. You have reminded me, so many times." Her laughter was low and pained, and behind it lurked the whimper of a dying animal. "Well, you have also said you will get no boys from me. I serve at the King's pleasure. Your word is law."

As she had spoken, so the color in Henry's face had risen. His gaze on her was just as hot as it had been all evening, but now it glowed with them embers of hatred rather than the sparks of desire.

"So it is, madam," he snarled. "May you never forget it."

And he turned, quivering with rage and pain, and stalked down the corridor as quickly as his limp would allow.


	7. Chapter 7

It was several days before Anne saw her husband again. She thought, remembering the heady days of their early courtship, of all the times she and Henry had upended the normal flow of court life by riding off to some royal estate or other, leaving Katherine all but forgotten as they went on progress.

He had not taken his leave of Whitehall yet, at least, had not left  _her_  behind. Had not even gone to Wolf Hall, as far as she knew.

Though she did her very best not to try too much to keep up with his doings. Easier to lose herself in the simple joy of Elizabeth's presence at court.

As the date of Henry's birthday drew nearer, as the court began to prepare for the lavish celebrations which would mark the occasion, though, it became more difficult to put him from her mind. In a very real, tangible sense, of course, he was inescapable. He was the King, her sovereign lord, her husband, the father of her children, both dead and living. But in a way less tangible, though just as real as all the rest, he was her tormentor, her very own demon.

And who could say that she did not deserve it? She had done to Katherine of Aragon what Jane Seymour had very nearly done to her. She had, if not directly then indirectly by her mere existence, kept the former's daughter from her; and when Katherine had died, lonely and impoverished in that godforsaken property known as The More, it had been a death without the merest comfort of knowing her child would be safe in the world she had no choice but to leave behind. She had hated Katherine and envied her and, truth be told, pitied her as a beautiful and desirable girl would pity an old woman, but she had almost become her, too. Elizabeth, like Mary, would have grown up motherless and forgotten. Or worse than forgotten. Disinherited, named a bastard, perhaps even relegated to serving the offspring of her mother's rival. It was enough to make Anne nauseous.

Which was truly a pity, as stormy May and dreary June were clearing just in time for the preparations for the King's birthday to begin in earnest. The scent of late June roses hung heavily over the palace, and Anne knew the stench of London in the summer would soon drive the court out of the city and to their summer retreats, if the sweating sickness did not do so first. In the Queen's apartment, windows had been flung open to let in the rose-scented breeze and the song of the birds carousing in the gardens.

Unwell as she felt, Anne lounged in a chaise in her bedchamber, not willing to admit defeat in the face of a little  _maladie_ and move to the bed. Her sister Mary had laid a linen cloth dipped in cool lavender water on her brow, which had helped Catherine, her niece, played a soft and sweet tune on the lute which Anne could hear from the presence chamber, which also helped. Her other ladies occupied themselves in the presence chamber as well, out of sight and blessedly out of mind. In her current state, Anne felt unequal to the masquerade she would have to don to see and be seen by them and others of the court who flocked to the Queen's rooms to also see and be seen.

As Anne dozed, she heard the footsteps of another entrant into her privy chamber, and opened her eyes to see her cousin, Madge Shelton, who dipped a curtsey but did not otherwise stop until she reached Anne's side. Her expression was regretful and resigned. "Your Majesty, I've found only some of the information you seek," she started, but Anne held up a hand.

"I fear you'll have to remind me what information I sought," she said with a little smile, and Madge smiled, too.

"Of course," she said. "Your Majesty had asked me to discover what others of the court were going to gift the King for his birthday. While I was able to hear some, many were not so willing to share their gift ideas with…" She trailed off, looking embarrassed and upset.

Madge was a sweet girl, if impressionable, and Anne's heart ached to see her kin who had so kindly accepted the offer to rejoin Anne's household. She had nearly lost her betrothed, Sir Henry Norris, to the same conspiracy of which Anne had nearly died. That estimable man, who had long been a friend to Anne and her family, had not been seen for some time, and yet Madge came to serve her Queen and cousin. When Anne and her uncle Howard and her father had used her most abominably to keep Henry's wandering eye focused on a friendly face during one of her own ill-fated pregnancies.

"With one known to be close to the Queen, who remains yet in ill favor," Anne said wryly. She removed the cloth from her forehead and sat up. "You have tried, and for that I thank you." She accepted the note from Madge, and set it aside to peruse later. Madge curtsied and made to go, but Anne stopped her.

"Cousin…" she started, stopped, and frowned. She took a deep breath, and lowered her voice. "I think of everything you have done for me, and I am distraught that I can only repay you by offering you a position in a benighted household… serving the one whom everyone would have you believe seduced your own betrothed… the one who pressed you to take her own husband to bed…" Anne shook her head, unable to continue for a long moment. Finally, she whispered, "Will you ever forgive me?"

Madge looked just a little shy of horrified, and she rushed forward, taking Anne's hand and clutching it. "Your Majesty, cousin Anne, no… there is no need for talk of forgiveness. We Boleyns do what we must for our great cause." She laughed, a strangled little sound. "And you nearly lost your life to it. Please think nothing of it. I think nothing of it now. It is all past. We have, all us Boleyn girls, lost our innocence in the service of our fathers and uncles." Madge glanced back at Mary, including her in the statement. "And these great men, these Boleyns and Howards, they all endure, while we suffer alone in scandal and ignominy." She kissed Anne's knuckles. "Please, dear coz… I am happy to be here with you. That is enough."

Anne took a deep and shuddering breath, and squeezed Madge's hand. "You are too good. Though I don't deserve such friends, I will endeavor to."

Madge smiled, that soft look in her eyes that Anne imagined had captivated Henry so, for that short time they were lovers. Her stomach turned, and she reclined on the lounge again. Madge moved to take the linen cloth, submerge it in lavender water and wring it out, and placed it gently on Anne's brow. "Rest now, Your Majesty. The court misses you, though it wouldn't dare admit as much. The King is in a right beastly state, and has been so for days."

Madge curtseyed and left, and it was just Mary and Anne all alone. Mary came closer and tentatively perched on the edge of the lounge.

"I knew you felt unwell, Your Majesty," Mary said in lilting tones, which signaled a teasing mood. "But I did not know you were so far gone as to  _apologize_."

"Hush," Anne said, but it was without heat and the corners of her mouth had curled. "Even I must be permitted some remorse. I hardly know how to react anymore. My position remains weak, I know not what sordid activities my husband participates in. Not that I care," she said swiftly. She sighed, and stood, and moved to the window seat.

"Ought you to be so near the window? Might it not inflame your illness?" Mary asked.

Anne shook her head. "The fresh breeze feels nice. I missed it so, during my confinement with Elizabeth." Taking a tasseled pillow and squeezing it to her chest, Anne sighed. "These are strange times. George in his self-imposed exile at Hever… I know Mark Smeaton has been brought there, under the care of some cotter's wife or another. But I cannot help but feel as if George stays away out of revulsion, or fear of being seen with me...lest those depraved accusations be dredged up."

"Scandal has followed me since our early days, so you may consider me an expert on the subject," Mary said. Her tone was light, but Anne saw through it. "As Father said, you are all but untouchable." She approached and said conspiratorially, "He spoke to me the other day. Can you believe it? And he has sent our vile sister-in-law Jane away from court, for telling tales regarding the unkind things you and George had said about the King's virility."

"I had not kept up with what had become of George's wife after my exoneration." Anne gave a rather Gallic shrug. That weasel-faced wench deserved whatever came of her. Anne had found it more to her liking to make friends with men than with other women, but even considering that predilection, she had no taste for Jane Rochford's loose lips, which had almost toppled Anne from the pinnacle.

Banishment to whatever property Thomas Boleyn had seen fit to relegate her seemed befitting for so disloyal a wife and sister-in-law. But Jane Rochford certainly would find herself no more lonely than the Queen whose reputation she had sought to besmirch.

"Once," Anne said slowly, "these rooms were at the heart of a joyful and exciting court. Even my enemies were forced here to pay tribute and to ensure their relevance. Now, most of my ladies treat their appointment as a burden to bear. It is lonely." She turned her eyes to the garden beneath the window, and rested her forehead against the glass. "Of course, the King is permitted his 'right beastly state,' for we all dance to his tune. But I am expected to return immediately to my performance, and continue this marionette existence, with nary a complaint allowed."

"Some would say you chose it," Mary pointed out, and then bit her lip. Though she and Anne were closer now than they had been for many years, and she had resumed life at court with hardly a stumble despite having been relegated to the country with William for so long, she couldn't forget Anne's quick temper. Who know what the Queen would take offense to? These days were uncertain, indeed. Not that she could blame Anne for the unsettled moods she experienced so often, lately.

"I chose it, to the extent that any of us are allowed a choice." Anne shrugged. "None of us could have imagined he'd unseat a Spanish infanta for one of her ladies-in-waiting. I should have guarded my heart and my tongue more, I know. And I know that the King is in pain. He's getting older, and that fall at the joust and how close we all came to catastrophe is still in his mind." She clenched her eyes shut. "I made him so angry, the other night, Mary, you have no idea. I thought he would snatch a torch from the wall and burn me then and there. But how could he say he would come to me that night? How could he dare presume it?"

"He's been bewitched by you for these many years, sister," Mary said, almost apologetically. She spread her hands out in front of her helplessly. "He always comes back to you. Don't you think, if it had happened the way the Seymours had wanted and you'd died that day, he wouldn't have regretted it for ever and ever? You have held him like no one, like Katherine could not, like Bessie Blount could not. The King is a fire. Jane Seymour is a wet blanket. You, sister, are kindling."

"I do feel quite burnt up," Anne said, and sighed ruefully.

"That is not what I meant," Mary said, smiling. "I mean to say that you and he feed each other. You are made of the same stuff. It is no wonder that he chose you."

"And yet everyone he chooses he disappoints. He loves you, and he abandons you. He is like a child, who must have and have and keep having, till you've nothing left and he moves on to the next entertainment."

Mary was quiet for a long moment. Then, she sat in the window seat and took Anne's hand. "I remember those feelings," she said quietly. "I was so young, back then, and I thought I loved him." She glanced at the door, and then said, much quieter, "He was more lovable then, as you know. A bonny king, Good King Hal, tall and brilliant and so handsome. He was generous, and sporting, and mischievous. The boyish attitude suited him better. And you remember how it all went to my head like the finest wine. I was celebrated as the king's sweetheart, our family was so pleased with me. In many ways, I was more important even than Queen Kath―ah, I mean, the Dowager Princess of Wales. It was heady stuff, sister. Life at the center of all the intrigue, in the reflected luminance of that handsome and powerful man…"

"But you said you would not trade your William Stafford for a king," Anne said.

Mary's gaze was soft and fierce at once. "I would not, it is true. I mean only that I understand the loneliness you speak of. When the King's attention shifts elsewhere and with it all the luster of the court. It feels like everything important is happening somewhere else."

"I imagine it is what some grand chamber feels like when the banquet has ended and the only remaining souls are the servants cleaning up," said Anne pensively. "Empty, echoing, perhaps embarrassed by the excesses of the brief gaudy hour that had passed before..."

"Pardon me, Your Majesty, Mama…"

They had not noticed the music stopping, but indeed it had. Catherine entered the bedchamber, a letter in hand. She curtseyed and brought the letter to Anne, who examined it with raised brows.

"It was just brought from Hever," Catherine said.

"George," Mary breathed.

Anne broke the seal and scanned the contents, and then paled. The letter dropped from her suddenly nerveless fingers and fluttered to the floor. Mary bent to retrieve it, and Catherine rushed forward.

"Aunt Anne," she cried softly.

Anne had lifted trembling hands to cover her face. From behind her fingers, she whispered, "George has written to say that Master Smeaton has died, of his wounds or of shame or of heartbreak, he knows not."

"My God," Mary said, but Anne went on as if she hadn't heard.

"He confessed, you know," she said. "His behavior had led me to believe he harbored feelings that went beyond the boundaries of courtly love into something unseemly. I had even reprimanded him, before my arrest… but even that came to be perceived as a mark of guilt by my interrogators." She straightened and lowered her hands; her eyes were dry, though filled with roiling emotion. "But despite that, his music had been a comfort to me, during that lonely time. So, it seems that Henry's machinations have claimed one life, after all."

Mary sighed. "You must be seen now, sister. It's imperative that, when the musician's death becomes common knowledge, you seem only as affected as would be appropriate."

"Yes, of course." Anne sounded as enthused as she looked, which was to say hardly at all. "We will visit Elizabeth in the nursery, and take supper with the court. Though, of course, the Lady Mary Tudor has long said that Elizabeth bears a suspicious resemblance to Master Smeaton, so perhaps a visit to my daughter would be looked at askance."

Mary waved a hand impatiently. "Forget that nonsense. You will go, and you will be seen, and you will smile."

"Are you my sister, or my father?" Anne asked with a sidelong look.

"I don't mean to goad you," Mary said, blinking. "I mean to encourage you. You said before how much regret you held. Well, God has seen fit to prolong your life. You had best be about the business of living it."


	8. Chapter 8

Yet still she had nothing to give the King for his birthday.

The courtiers Madge had been able to question sought to give him the usual presents: horses, jewels, artwork. Henry’s stables and coffers and palaces overflowed with such things already. He loved tapestries, and no doubt many of them would find their way into Henry’s possession very soon, as well. Sables and ermine and beautifully carved furniture… All well and good as presents from the members of his court and even fellow sovereigns, the other crowned heads of Europe, who would seek to soften him for alliances by presenting him with masterfully made treasures. But for his unwanted Queen, who didn’t want him, either...nothing so ordinary would do.

Happy to be at court, eager to make a favorable impression, and wanting dearly to engage in the pageantry she did not see nearly enough of at Hatfield, Elizabeth asked permission to give her papa a masquerade performance of her own design, starring herself and the few other children currently at court, who would, in the coming years, join Elizabeth in the schoolroom. Once she had explained her idea to Anne, who knew that the king would be charmed by such a performance as he dearly loved children (notwithstanding the way he had treated Elizabeth and the Lady Mary due to his feelings for their mothers), Anne promised to help her arrange everything. Surely Henry would not fail to be impressed with his daughter’s cleverness and precocity. Perhaps he could be persuaded to look more favorably on Elizabeth as a future queen in her own right.

Arranging everything would entail inviting the Lady Mary to court, it seemed. Elizabeth missed her sister very much, and thought it would do very well to bring her back to court to be with their father on his birthday. Elizabeth was certainly the only one to think of the Lady Mary’s attendance at the august occasion. While the former princess still had many supporters, none of them would risk Henry’s wrath by showing her attention beyond her merit as the king’s eldest child, bastard though she was. Irascible as he was right now, and all the more dangerous for it, bringing his stubborn daughter into his presence could inflame his temper and put not just Anne and the Lady Mary in danger, but also little Elizabeth, if only by association. For all her precocious cleverness, Elizabeth could not yet understand the complex divisions within her family. Nor would Anne yet want her to. There would be time to disillusion her precious child later. Anne would bear the brunt of the Lady Mary’s scorn and the King’s displeasure. It would be worth it all to see Elizabeth’s joy in putting on her very own masquerade.

And she could not help but think it would be the first real test of her own power, the first real chance to gauge how untouchable she truly was.

“A bold strategy indeed,” Madge said to Anne as the royal carriage in which they road bounced along toward Hatfield. Elizabeth had been lulled to sleep by the jostling and swaying, and her head now rested in Anne’s lap. She smiled, stroking the soft reddish-gold curls that had tubld out from the confines of their little jeweled hair net. Across from her, Madge and Lady Bryan watched the mother and daughter with warmth.

“And very clever of Your Majesty to bring the Princess along,” Lady Bryan said, with a glance toward Madge. They were both kin of the Queen, though Lady Bryan did not quite approve of Madge Shelton’s informality or, indeed, her reputation. “The Lady Mary,” Lady Bryan reasoned, “for all her faults, is very fond of her half-sister.”

Anne could not imagine anyone who wouldn’t be, and was glad to hear it, despite her longstanding conviction that Mary was her mortal enemy.

After everything, after Henry’s infidelities, the loss of two pregnancies, and the threat of Jane Seymour… Anne supposed that the time had come to reevaluate that belief.

Hatfield welcomed its surprise royal arrival with a barely concealed panic that lasted only as long as it took Lady Bryan to assure the householders that the Queen did not intend to stay long, nor did Her Majesty intend to sup at Hatfield, and that the Princess would return with her to London. Although those of Elizabeth’s household were certainly put upon to wonder what the Queen could have to say to the Lady Mary that would bring her all the way to Hatfield.

When Mary was brought into Anne’s presence, the younger woman inclined her head very slightly in greeting. It was the height of rudeness to greet the Queen thusly, although perfectly calculated to show the proper degree of respect for the Marquess of Pembroke. But Anne found that she no longer cared as much as she used to. Indeed, almost to her surprise she found that she did not care at all whether the girl showed her the respect that was her due as Queen. All she felt now, seeing the pretty, slender girl with shabby garments and nearly the same red-gold hair as Elizabeth was sorrow and pity. Anne knew that she had gone about approaching her stepdaughter all the wrong way. Perhaps it was too late to make recompense, but Anne saw in the girl’s face not her worst enemy but rather her biggest mistake. She had humbled herself enough to apologize to her cousin Madge, but it was to the Lady Mary that Anne had committed the most grievous wrongs.

In the split second it took Anne to reach that monumental conclusion, Elizabeth hurried forth from her mother’s side toward her sister. Anne watched curiously, never before having seen the two of them interact.

“Mary, hello!” Elizabeth greeted her cheerfully. Mary lowered herself to Elizabeth’s level and allowed the little girl to bestow a kiss on each of her cheeks.

“Hello, Elizabeth.”

Looking on, Anne observed the meeting between the two half-sisters. Elizabeth had begun babbling in that adorably rushed way very young children had, when the sheer excitement of the information they wanted to impart overwhelmed their ability to convey it in the manner it deserved. Lady Mary seemed amused, if the faint crinkling at the corners of her eyes and the little smile tugging on her mouth were any indication… though Anne did not doubt that the continuing stiffness of her posture and the set of her shoulders were for Anne’s own benefit. How strange it must be for her, Anne thought, though Mary clearly had the courage of her Spanish ancestors: she had never kowtowed to Anne, and had risked her father’s affection and her own safety to stay true to her beliefs, however wrongheaded.

A lull in the conversation drew Anne back from her musings. Anne saw Elizabeth looking at her expectantly, and her quick mind filled in the detail she’d missed with her wool-gathering.

“Lady Mary,” she started, and then cleared her throat. In a stronger tone, she said, “Lady Mary, you might have gathered from my daughter’s exuberant speech that she wishes to create a masquerade for your father’s birthday, and she especially wishes for you to take part in it. Elizabeth has impressed upon me her affection for you and your own kindness toward her since you’ve resided with her here at Hatfield…” Anne realized that the focus of her words had long since been lost, and strove to master herself and refrain from ridiculous rambling. “It would make Elizabeth very happy to have you join her in the creation and performance of a masquerade for your father the King's birthday celebration.”

Mary inhaled sharply as her eyes widened, but she had no opportunity to speak because Elizabeth jumped in. “I wrote my very own song, Mary!”

Anne knew this, because Elizabeth had told her, but the little girl had made her mother promise to wait until their rehearsal to hear it. Apparently, Elizabeth took after her father in both musical talent and love of surprises. Anne had been so warmed to hear that Elizabeth had written a little song, and it seemed that Mary was charmed by the idea, too. The older girl said, with a little smile that belied her serious tone, “I am very proud of you, sister. Father will be, as well, that your have inherited his affinity for music.”

Anne hid her surprise very well. To hear the Lady Mary admit that Elizabeth’s father was one in the same as her own was something, indeed.

“We hope that your pleasure in your sister’s creativity will encourage you to accept her invitation.” Anne tried for calm coolness, and believed that she mostly succeeded. Elizabeth wandered back to her side and Mary straightened from her crouch, eyeing Anne with her own cool gaze.

“I am inclined to accept, only due to my sister’s sweetness in considering and inviting me,” Mary responded eventually. Her eyes narrowed. “However, it does not escape my notice that the King has forbidden me to enter his presence until I have signed his heretical oath. To be in my father’s presence again would be a balm to the many wounds I have suffered, over these long years, but even so, I cannot ignore that the sight of me is likely to anger and offend him whose affection and love have been the fulcrum of my world.”

Anne nodded slowly, coming to understand what Mary alleged. “Lady Bryan, would you take Elizabeth to her chambers? I believe she has some trinkets and mementoes she wished to have with her while at court. I would like you to help her gather them for our return journey.”

Lady Bryan bobbed a curtsy. “Of course, Your Majesty,” she said, and appeared as if she wanted to say something else, but kept her lips pressed closed and escorted Elizabeth away. Elizabeth waved gaily to her mother and sister, and pranced out of the room, her little hand ensconced safely in the hand of her governess.

When the two of them had gone, Anne faced Mary directly, and the girl stared back at her with a proud hauteur that would have been insolence on anyone other than the daughter of Henry Tudor and Katherine of Aragon. Even if she was conceived in an ill-fated, mismanaged marriage that had no standing in legality, the girl was certainly the daughter and granddaughter of kings, and carried herself as such. She was beautiful, too, as beautiful as her mother had been said to be when she had been the celebrated Princess of Wales, married to Arthur, Henry’s older brother. Objectively speaking, Anne knew that it was a shame that Mary moldered away here at Hatfield when her rightful place was at court, amid her father’s courtiers where she could have sought a husband. For the kindness and sweetness the girl had shown Elizabeth, Anne wanted to reward her. For the guilt Anne carried in her own soul at the part she had played in the girl’s demotion in status and in her father’s love, Anne wanted to reward her. But she knew that the girl would not make it that easy for her.

“The last thing I wish is to bring you at odds again with your father,” Anne said quietly. She held Mary’s gaze. “Whether you believe me or not is irrelevant. I did not come here to argue with you or debate the past. I came because my daughter wanted to include you in her plans for the King’s birthday, and I hoped...yes, hoped against hope, in fact, that for Elizabeth’s sake you would agree. The King has not been himself lately, due in no small part to the recent trouble I have had...but surely you know that he suffered a major blow to his health and his pride while jousting several months before. I had hoped to bring you to his notice, and I vowed that I would shield you and Elizabeth with all my power if he should choose to react in anger.”

Mary tilted her head, eyes glittering. “Madam, I have always been fond of my sister though I often fought against conflicting feelings regarding her. But you will understand my reluctance to agree to your scheme, I pray.”

“Indeed I understand,” Anne said softly. “Lady Mary, please understand that I know I have done you grievous wrongs, and do not wish to pursue the unpleasant business of the past. I would rather occupy the time God has seen fit to gift me with easing the pain I have caused others. Whether you accept me as Queen or accept my sincere apology is up to you. However, you are a very intelligent young lady by all accounts—I hope that you will see that you need not accept my sentiments to reap the rewards. I would see you out of your servitude here and celebrated as the King’s daughter.”

Mary’s hands trembled, and Anne’s eyes, drawn by the movement and the glitter in them, saw that Mary grasped a lovely bejeweled rosary—clutched tightly, even. The girl strove for equanimity, and like Anne, mostly succeeded.

The show of emotion in this cold girl signaled to Anne that she had drawn closer to success. “You need not accept any of the sentiments required by the Oath of Succession, Mary. But showing your obedience to the King your father is paramount to reestablishing your relationship with him. Allow me to reunite you,” she cajoled softly, “and you may make of your relationship with your father what you will. I do not want to stand in the way. Elizabeth is the jewel of his world...but you are his pearl. Let your suffering, and his, come to an end. Let me do this for you. I ask nothing in return.”

Anne saw Mary’s lower lip tremble, saw her clench the rosary in her hand tight enough to turn her knuckles white, and rushed forward just in time to save her stepdaughter from a nasty head wound as she swooned away to the floor.


	9. Chapter 9

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> And on we go. Thank you to everyone who has continued reading thus far. I humbly ask you to leave a comment with what you liked, disliked, and so on. The reason I keep going is hearing back from readers!
> 
> Please note: I adapted the “song” from a poem by Sue Skeen. Credit goes to her.

The journey back to Whitehall was less eventful than the tete-a-tete Anne had shared with Mary. Recovered, if a little bemused and a fair bit distrustful, her stepdaughter had agreed to accompany them to London. She had even gone to pack her own belongings, meager as Anne assumed that they were, but Anne had shook her head and ordered Lady Bryan to find a servant to undertake that task. It must have been some time before Mary had had anyone to wait upon her, but it was important to Anne that Mary see the immediate benefits of agreeing to allow Anne to take her under wing. Regardless of what happened in the aftermath, if Henry finally did take Anne’s head for this defiance of his wishes, she would strive to do well by the girl who had every reason to hate Elizabeth, and yet seemed truly to love her.

With Mary discreetly ensconced in an elegant little set of rooms Anne had had prepared for her, she and Elizabeth went to work on their grand undertaking. They commandeered one of the larger gathering rooms for the building of the props and practicing of the dance they were to perform. A few of the other children at court, progeny of the courtiers with the highest rank and therefore the ability to care for a child at court—and children born with the right status to befriend the King’s only legitimate child—were asked to join in, and luckily for Anne and Lady Bryan, who supervised the practice and the costuming and the background and, indeed, the entire affair, the steps they were required to learn and the song they were required to sing were simple enough that it was all learned within a day. Otherwise, Anne knew that word would reach the King, and Elizabeth’s surprise would be ruined.

She couldn’t allow that to happen, not with a situation so delicate, given her own recent escape from the headsman and the unauthorized presence of the Lady Mary.

The day of Henry’s birth dawned bright and fair, as expected for late June. Anne, unwell that morning, nevertheless donned a bright smile and her very best garments in anticipation of the event, later for that evening. All that Henry had been told was a banquet in his honor had been staged, and as long as all the participants had kept their word, he would be in for what she hoped was a jolly surprise and a heartfelt reunion with the young lady he called his little pearl.

If not, perhaps by the day’s end she’d see the inside of the Tower once more.

There was much to do beforehand, and Anne, feeling the weight of pressure, kept her finger on every pulse point as the event drew nearer and time approached for the masquerade to begin. The children had been garbed in choir robes of cloth of silver; Elizabeth and her sister Mary wore cloth of gold. Other performers were wood sprites and sea nymphs, dressed in gay costumes according to their nature. The set piece consisted of a lovely forest glade, with makeshift trees and flowers and a particularly rotund older lady of the court who had been chosen to represent the sun: she sat in a tower, waiting to be rolled onto the set as the script called for, swathed in yellow satin.

Anne waited in an antechamber, having just been given word that Henry and other favored courtiers had taken their seats and waited for the masque to begin. She drew a deep breath, and knelt to kiss Elizabeth on the head. “Are you nervous, my love?”

Elizabeth shook her head, gently, so as not to unseat the bright garland she wore upon her head. “No, Mama. You and my sister Mary are here to help me. Papa will be so pleased, won’t he?”

“He will,” Anne said confidently, rising to her feet. She saw Mary watching her, one hand lost in the folds of her skirts. Considering the drab attire that the girl had brought with her from Hatfield, the costume gown she wore now was the finest garment she had seen in years. Anne knew she would have to rectify that, but it was a task for another time.

Mary looked positively ill.

“He will,” she repeated in firm tones.

She saw Mary mouth the words he will, and Anne could have cried for the hope and the fear in her stepdaughter’s eyes. Here was a girl who was used to being the joy of her papa’s world—indeed, as Anne had once been Thomas Boleyn’s joy. They had another thing in common, too...fathers who had failed them most egregiously. Anne had been fortunate enough to begin to make peace with her own father, after he had refused to defend Anne during her arrest and trial and even after. She only hoped that Mary had a similar reconciliation in her near future.

She gave the signal, and one of her ladies went to bid the musicians to start. A moment later, the music swelled.

***

Rumors had abounded at court for the last few days. Henry knew that his court was no stranger to rumor, and that any court was fueled by speculation and secrets and jockeying for position… but these rumors were unique. Every courtier attempted to outdo the next when it came to the occasions for presenting the King with a gift. He had received many strange and wondrous gifts over the years, including lavish gold plate, sparkling jewels, expensive cloth, and even exotic animals for his menagerie.

He had not expected a performance for his birthday, although the rumor had eventually reached his ear that a grand production was being staged in his honor. His wife and his daughter were said to be the authors of the performance, and certainly when he took a seat and allowed his gaze to rove over the set pieces he saw Anne’s elegant hand in them. There was a childish sweetness and simplicity to many of the choices, however, that told him the inspiration was Elizabeth herself.

Henry had made certain to avoid Anne—and, he had to admit, Elizabeth as well—over the past several days. He found himself alternately hurt and angry, and indeed wondering with no small amount of self-recrimination why he could not put that infernal woman from his head. Either he was angry enough with her to order her to be put to death, or he was in love with her to the point of severing all ties with Holy Mother Church. There was no middle ground. Not even his Jane evoked such passion in him, and that thought had caused him to keep his distance from the Seymours as well.

The Seymours had sent gifts including an altar cloth embroidered from Jane herself. It was a lovely piece, one he knew Jane intended for him to put to immediate use in his private chapel. But he could not bring himself to do it, nor could he bring himself to refrain from noticing that her stitches were nowhere near as fine as Anne’s, or even as fine as Katherine’s had been.

In his honest moments, when he could not fool himself into thinking that he had behaved with impeccable honor over the last few years, Henry knew that England deserved a woman who would be a credit to the crown and an ornament to his court, a woman certain to arouse admiration in visiting dignitaries and envy in his fellow sovereigns… and he could not convince himself that Jane was such a woman. Anne may not have been raised with the expectation of being wife and helpmeet to a King, and might have some common blood, but she was well-educated and boasted royal lineage that could be traced back to Henry II, great-grandson of William the Conqueror. The Seymours claimed royal descent, too, but Jane could barely write and had been raised with the expectation of a more humble marriage. She was as sweet as Anne was sharp, and as gently golden as Anne was darkly vibrant… but Anne had planted the seeds of doubt regarding Jane’s and her family’s sincerity, and the doubt had taken strong root.

Disrupting his thoughts and pulling him back to the present, the music started with a pitter-patter of rain and a simulation of thunder. Dancers wearing full grey and flashing silver jumped across the stage, and the master of revels announced somberly, “Many troubles befell England until the coming of King Henry the Eighth. His brightness and bravery restored the people’s faith. On this day and every other the people of England shall thank the Lord our God for Good King Hal.”

Henry could not hide his smile, and did not trouble himself to. He recognized the simple verses as the efforts of a child, and knew himself to be impressed. Though the young girl might have had help, he knew that she had put forth every effort to impress her Papa.

Leaning forward, his eyes bright, Henry watched as the cloud-bedecked dancers were cleared away at a swish from the master of revels’s staff. Onto the set rolled a tower carrying Lady Pemberton, an old dame who wore sunny yellow and gaily tossed yellow rose petals onto the dancers below, who now wore airy blue and bright green garments. A choir of children came forth, bringing with them his Elizabeth, clad in gold…

...and Mary, his eldest, dressed in the same.

The girls held hands, and they and the children’s choir opened their mouths, and began to sing.

 _There in every memory_  
_We see his love and care_  
_His bravery and strength of heart_  
_Freely he doth share_  
_King and father, one and same_  
_To all English children true_  
_Strong and tender discipline_  
_Which delivery he doth rue_  
_Long live the King our father_  
_Head of our family_  
_Leading us by God’s grace_  
_In love and harmony_

Henry could pick out Mary’s rich alto and Elizabeth’s pretty, birdlike trill, and he met the gaze of his eldest daughter as she sang. Her eyes held his, but he saw that they were filled with tears. The proud daughter and granddaughter of kings did not let them fall, but rather blinked them away as they finished their performance and curtseyed low. They held the position, and indeed it seemed as if the whole gathering held its breath.

Henry sat frozen as emotions warred within him. A deep paternal proudness, a tender affection, and the rage of a father who expected to be obeyed fought for dominance. He hardly knew what he was going to do, and the silence dragged, tense as a string held tight and ready to snap, before he stood slowly, leaning his weight on his good leg.

His eye caught movement to the side and he saw his wife standing unobtrusively to the side, her intertwined fingers lifted to her mouth as if in prayer.

He watched her for a moment, until she noticed his focus and she lowered her hands. He imagined he could see her knuckles clenched white. That tight feeling in his chest broke.

Henry lifted his hands and clapped vigorously. “Bravo,” he shouted, “‘marvelous! Very well done!”

Elizabeth, face glowing with pride, pushed through those gathered and leapt into his arms. “Papa, happy birthday!” she shouted exuberantly.

He laughed, steadying himself and adjusting the weight of the tiny girl in his arms. It would not be long before either he could not bear the weight, given his leg, or she would grow too much for him to comfortably lift, and so he did not set her down, lost as he was in his feelings.

“Thank you, my little princess,” he said, and the courtiers around them clapped over the adorable familial picture they made. The applause died off as Anne approached, the crowd parting to let the Queen pass, giving little bows to her as she went. Perhaps they figured that, as the mastermind behind Elizabeth’s presentation, which Henry had so clearly enjoyed, Anne would rise once more in the King’s estimation.

“Your Majesty,” she said in a soft, rather strange tone. He was not used to hearing hesitance in her voice. “I have brought you another gift. Your eldest daughter Mary, who,” and she lowered her tone, “has signed the Oath of Succession and who wishes to show her filial obedience.”

“Come, Mary!” called Elizabeth joyously, and she wriggled our of her Papa’s arms to fetch the former princess.

Henry saw her approach as if in a dream. His pearl, who for so long had been at odds with her father and who had chosen her obstinate mother over her father and her sovereign, had grown into a beautiful young woman, with hair a little darker than Elizabeth’s hidden by the elaborate hood of her costume. Nevertheless, he could see the strain in her face, the years of loneliness and hardship. Had it been so long?

Mary curtseyed deeply before him, shoulders trembling.

Henry took a deep breath.

“Rise, Lady Mary,” he said solemnly, “and greet the father who had missed you these many years.”


End file.
